Cloning a Windows NT 4.0 Server

[mekesse]

We have spent a considerable amount of time setting up one of our web servers on NT 4.0 with IIS. We would like to be able to easily replicate this machine, including installed software, registry entries, users and security permissions.

I know that "GHOST" is a powerful cloning tool, but I hear that it doesn't allow you to copy the SAM database and may not allow you to replicate vitual directory settings, etc.

If anyone has any ideas, tools or solutions for addressing this problem, I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks!

Michael Kesselman

 

[peterve]

Norton Ghost will do the trick, believe me Peter Van Eeckhoutte
peter.ve@pandora.be

 

[Pantman]

Ghost will do the trick but remember to use the change SID function (I think it's called Ghost Walker). Also ask yourself if you really do want to clone the machine (for instance this wouldn't make sense if you have configured the first one as a PDC and you were wanting to introduce the second to the same domain!!!). Any other advice needed give us a shout

HTH

 

[jjc]

Why don't you mirror the the drive. it is a lot better than ghosting in my opinion.
if one drive stops to function the other one, with little work, will take over.

Take a look at that option.

Juan

 

[peterve]

Indeed,
just mirror the disk, and you can take the mirrored disk, boot with the NT4 bootdisk, perform a boot record repair (make sure you have a repairdisk) and you should be able to boot from the mirrored disk... That works as well ! Peter Van Eeckhoutte
peter.ve@pandora.be

 

[mekesse]

Thanks to all who have responded thus far. Your input has been very helpful.

I do have a clarification, provided by our chief web developer. Any help would be greatly appreciated:

>All of the machines would be Domain Member Servers (not PDC, BDCs, WINS,
>DHCP, etc.) They would only be running IIS 4.0, web, ftp and SMTP as well
as
>a variety of proprietary and application software with potentially complex
>security settings (because of IIS these would both be at the domain and
>server/machine level.) Things don't work well, if you even attempt to
change
>the computer name with IIS, both because of IUSR_<machine> as the default
>user and for various settings in MS Management Console (virtual
>directories). The real time consuming portion is installing and configuring
>the applications and the web sites, not the installation of NT. Is there
>anyone out there with experience using Ghost to set up live web servers
>(complete with application software)? We would be appreciate hearing about
>any problems and/or solutions that may have come up.

 

[reiziger]

Maybe you could use something different from Ghost? Have you tried this program?

http://ics-iq.com/downloads.cfm

It's a free demo, so you might check it out before you buy something.